Film Review: Atrocious (2010)

The Quintanilla family was found dead. Recorded evidence was discovered by the police. Production company acquires the confidential material and edits it into a Horror Movie.

REVIEW:

Welcome again to another round of “been there”. I come out of these style films with varied mixed feelings. Of the 10 or so I’ve seen this year, the top ones have been “The Fourth Kind”, “REC” and Paranormal Activity (1&2). But style aside, we really are always pulled back into that Blair Witchthing, which sometimes bothers me.

Now this film is getting featured under that Bloody Disgusting brand, which doesn’t mean that you “should” buy into IT. You should however put aside marketing for a second and know that this film is nothing special. I’m not going to give it a total “waste” moniker, as it still has a few good things going for it.

What I was most bothered by, I suppose is that the filmmaking is nothing short of what you and your cousins could do with a handheld camera running around in a dense forest. In this case its a tree filled labyrinth of sorts which is much more interesting. Yes, we get that “Ghost Hunters” POV thing here, and at some points you almost expect Zak from “Ghost Adventures to start a narration.

There is a well (aka The Ring) and no Samara doesn’t come out but something close is reported to dwell inside (I think).

So to bring us up to speed…The Quintanilla family was found murdered in their country side house. We grab a found footage presentation that is kept in authority evidence hands. The family travel out to an old house located in Sitges. With there cam corders in hand they set out to film details surrounding the “Legend of the Girl in the Garraf woods”. We are told about a bad entity by the name of Melinda. We are told that she is different things to different people, so we are not entirely clear if she should be feared.

July and Christian (Cristian Valencia) do the brunt of the investigation which is haphazardly just them walking around filming things. Out of the 5 days they live thru 4. Now what stirs things up is when they go wandering into the woods labyrinth despite warnings from Dad. The area is pretty impressive and certainly a cool shot for a horror film. Though it also might as well be cornfields, if you know what I mean. We get a foreshadow in the way of “this would be scary to walk thru at night” (in which they end doing). Essentially after their dog goes missing and his carcass is found dragged to the bottom of the well, the team begins to freak a little. It is not long before dead folks, start showing up, people get yanked around and a few peculiar things just start happening. Our lovely spirit is of course pissed off and wants everyone dead.

Ok, that’s probably enough reveal as it will require your own experience. I got the notion that the film would be more effective in a theater setting rather than on home viewing. Let me make something clear though…..there’s nothing new here…walk away. It’s ok, if you want to check it out on your own, though don’t expect much beside the occasional out of camera range hysterics going on. The film wins points in a few legit creep moments which really in my mind was in the last 2 minutes. I return to my statement that because this is so cheaply and easily done, we’re bound to see 20 more of these before the trend dies. I’m beginning to worry that filmmakers are getting too comfortable with this approach and losing classic director flair. I’ll be the first to say (well maybe not the first)…we need more Kubrick, Carpenter., Stone and Coen. Enough with the night vision terror routine.

Major influences here? “Blair Witch Project”, “The Ring”, “Ghost Hunters” and “Paranormal Activity“. If you own all those, maybe that might be enough.

4 comments

I’ll take it from here. First of all, the girl in the legend is named Melinda, not Melissa. Secondly, the girl’s name in The Ring is Samara, not Tamara. If you’re going to write a review I would suggest, at least, getting the names right. It’s all good, though. I say tomato, you say it wrong, as they say.
And you were bothered most by the style in which the film was shot? That’s what bothered you the most? It was marketed like that. That’s like not liking Zombieland for having zombies in it. What I found the most bothersome were the plots holes that were so big, it was like a German fetish film. Like Jose being missing, for instance. I don’t know about anyone else, but I can smell a BBQ party from like 5 miles away. And Dad leaving the family there, in the middle of the woods, knowing that they forgot to pack “the blue bag”. Given the past, as soon as they found out the blue bag was missing, they should have driven fast enough to break the sound barrier back to the house to get it.
And there was homage to older classic horror films as you requested. The final shot of the film when Cristian kneels in front of the television and the shot that happens after that (I’m trying not to spoil it). But that shot is totally Hitchcock. Like glam horror.
I appreciate your attempt at a review of this film, but as soon as I saw that one of your favorite horror films was The Fourth Kind, I had severe doubts. That movie was so bad I wanted to fashion my popcorn bag into a boomerang and saw my ears off with it.

The misspellings were an honest mistake as they were from memory (though I’ll correct that now), though the statement was that “The Fourth Kind” was one of the better in this style. This style being found footage, cinema verite. Yes, that is correct, the shooting even though handheld was poor handheld. If you can imagine that. There are better handheld planned and shot films, that offer more in the way of on screen suspense. As in the review, I didnt think the movie was awful, just not up to par with others I’ve seen. Once you have a chance to compare this to the soon to be out “Grave Encounters”, you’ll see what I mean. Cinema verite films can be really exciting, but there has to be a line drawn between exciting ones and those who just walk around shooting in the dark. Compare apples to apples…..take a look at REC, a great use shooting in the dark. Atrocious really has very little that happens in the dark as comparison. I’m hoping that you are not part of marketing for this film, as fans need to know before they spend there $

No, I am not part of the marketing of the film. No way. Just another dude that writes reviews. And I totally agree that the movie isn’t the best of the found footage genre. The last twenty minutes of the movie had so many shots of bushes in it that I thought I was watching the Home and Garden channel. And there were some plots holes in the film that totally took me out of the movie watching experience. And I appreciate you, not only keeping my comment up, but actually responding to it. It shows that you’re a good sport. It was good talking shop with you, sir.